In an improbable Verona, fictitious rather than futuristic, passably dilapidated, housing a favored ruling class (Juliet’s family) and a miserable and exploited population (Romeo’s world), the meeting of two lovers is banned and outlawed; the omnipresent, muscled militia ordained by Juliet’s family to maintain social order is not only a Shakespearian image of fatality, it’s also the influence of power over one of the most essential individual freedoms : the freedom to love.

Even if they comply at times, Romeo and Juliet each refute their imposed way of life in their respective social classes, which are closed to all communication as dictated by the militia of collective consciousness, hence the scandal of this love. Both want to be elsewhere, both feel the necessity to drop out ; both aspire to what the other has. The passionate shock will permit them to move forward, to dare to escape the fate that was traced for them.”

Angelin Preljocaj (1991)

Angelin Preljocaj presents a rereading of his own ballet Romeo and Juliet produced in December 1990 for the Lyon Opera Ballet.

Bearing the stamp of his Albanian origins and culture, he then chose to set this universal love story in the totalitarian regime of an East European country.

It was not a question of a fight between clans as tradition would have it, but of a confrontation between the militia responsible for keeping social order and the ‘family’ of the homeless, on the fringe of society, that Angelin then imagined such a premonition.

Now, the historical context has changed and time has caught up with intuition: the: phenomenon of the homeless is now very real, the Berlin Wall has come down and Enki Bilal’s decor is to be transformed; Angelin’s dance itself has changed. This time he is confronted by the dancers of his own company, interpreters ‘broken in’ to his work with whom an artistic complicity has been established over the course of time and successive creations.

There can thus be several versions, each carrying its own interpretation: each Romeo, each Juliet is different. There will be several casting arrangements within the company.

This is not a question of antagonism but, quite to the contrary, of a constant mirror game in which each is enriched by the vision of the other, where the role of the interpreter takes on its full sense towards a wider circulation of works and a development of dance in general.